Exit-Ed: Stories From Grind to Sale

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Welcome to Exit-Ed stories from grind to sale. This is the podcast where we dive into the journeys of founders who have navigated the path from building their companies to successful exits. We interview entrepreneurs from around the US and around the globe, exploring their experiences, scaling processes, and the lessons they've learned. We'll talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly. We're excited to have you with us. Let's get started and let's get excited.

Hey guys, so excited to be here today. Today we're going to be speaking to Tatiana Chamorro. She is an entrepreneur from Nicaragua in Central America. And she will talk about her experiences as an entrepreneur from a perspective of a mom, a wife, someone who exited a business in difficult terms, and also someone who's currently building her third or fourth business.

in the cocktail industry. join me and let's have some fun with Tatiana Chamorro today. Hey guys, how's everybody doing? I am here with my friend Tatiana Chamorro. Tatiana is one of the founders that has had a wonderful story with her trajectory as a founder.

And with truth is I don't know a lot about her story. So the point about these recording is to learn about her and her telling us a little bit more about her story as a founder that exited. So Tatiana, welcome to exited. Our podcast is stories from grinding to exit. And we're excited to have you here today.

So tell us a little bit about you. Where are you from? Hi, Gaby. Thank you for having me. Very excited to be here. I am originally from Nicaragua, although I like to say that I'm now from Texas. I've been here for 11 years. I live in Dallas. My husband and I are both from Nicaragua. And when we got here, we were coming here for him to just do a master's, and now it's been 11 years. So I've had my daughter here, so I feel Texan, Nicaraguan.

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That's wonderful. I am in Dallas also, and I know you and I have had the opportunity to chat a couple of times in person about your story and you are an entrepreneur. Tell us about what does being an entrepreneur mean to you? You know, it's very interesting. I think the definition of entrepreneurship has evolved in my in my understanding over the years. Initially, I just thought it's a business owner, someone who has a business and they have employees and they are a boss.

And I think as I became an entrepreneur, I started to realize the difference between a business owner and an entrepreneur. I am a creator. I love, I have ideas all the time. I have a notebook where I write them down. I'm always inventing solutions. I'm always questioning the solutions that we currently live through, right? So like I'm walking through the door and I open the door and I notice that the door maybe does this. And I'm like, it would be easier if we do this and that. And my head's just always rolling with ideas. So I think an entrepreneur is a problem solver.

a risk taker and someone who just really, I think we're a little crazy. We love going through a lot of things and being busy and always having challenges. I love challenges. Right. And obviously we live in such a modern society, like challenges are everywhere and the evolution of humanity, you how you think about even technology evolved in the last.

few years. So my husband and I were in the East Coast recently and we were doing the math between 1865 because we were visiting and studying about Lincoln and even between 1865 and the year that we sent people to the moon was like a 70 year span. was really short if you think so. isn't that amazing and how evolution happens because of people like you?

You know, people, you know, I consider myself an entrepreneur as well. so growing up, did you know you were an entrepreneur? I don't think so. I think that growing up, I knew I wanted, I liked business, but I didn't really, I come from an entrepreneurial family. I'm not the first one to become an entrepreneur. but I also come from a family of business owners, which, you know, it's very different. So operators is what I'm going to call them. Right. so I remember doing little things. I had my neighbor.

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and her and I would sell things in the neighborhood. One of my favorite stories is we would make our own recipe for cookies and we would sell them. But they were the hardest cookies you would ever think. Like they would, I swear we probably broke someone's teeth. So I didn't know this, I thought they were fantastic. I mean, I would make them every week and I would eat them. And for some reason they would sell. And then I found out a couple of years later that my mom was actually calling on all the neighbors and asking them to buy the cookies.

But in my head, we were making fantastic cookies, you know? So I think I can see in retrospect traits that made me an entrepreneur. I don't think that I understood that that was entrepreneurship. And I love that you asked that question because often do we not teach children about entrepreneurship? We teach them about becoming business owners and thinking about business, but the concept of entrepreneurship is so much more innovative and creative.

And we don't tend to connect that with the ideas we're having. Right. And he also feels, mean, being an entrepreneur, which, know, in my case, I actually didn't realize I was an entrepreneur until about a year ago because I was trained in a completely different non-entrepreneurial career as an attorney. But then I realized because of all these ideas always popping in my head and always thinking I was anxious, actually, I thought I was a very anxious person and, know,

So when did you realize it? Like if you look back, when did you say or when did you accept the title of entrepreneur in your life? I think I have accepted the title for many years, but I didn't realize it until like last year. And I think the way that I realized it is once I exited my first business, I started getting all these ideas. And I remember sitting down in my kitchen one time and just working and I was like typing and I was building like processes and I had this really cool idea that I wanted to.

to build and then I realized it was like 5 a.m. and I was still like writing and I said, okay, this is crazy. I need to like lay down, I need to breathe. But then something like clicked in me and I said, this is entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is when you have this idea that is wonderful and you just cannot get it out of your head because you know it's going to be awesome. And that's when I was like, okay, I'm not just a business owner. I am not just a creative person. I am an entrepreneur who has the eagerness.

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to really create and build something that doesn't exist. Right. And you know, I love how you differentiated the business owner, operator versus entrepreneur. Cause I agree. I think I've heard a lot of business owners who are wonderful. Obviously it is very different to own a business and operating a business and then having, you know, like crazy ideas about how to fix a problem, how to fill a gap. And in my case, also I'm reading the book.

Blue Oceans Tell me more like were you ever a business owner and then at some point in that journey you said well I'm a business owners, but how I guess during that business owner period did you employ your Entrepreneur side is that makes sense. Yeah, that's a great question. I think honestly, I got started very young I got married when I was 20. I had my son right around that time I had not finished college yet. So I went back to college and

But you know what? think I entrepreneurship is often connected with business, but I think entrepreneurship is all about creative thinking and strategy. And I can track back to decisions that I made when I was in college on how those were traits of an entrepreneur. And I didn't really realize that to give you an example. When I went to college, I started college in Pennsylvania and a private university called Mercyhurst University. I was studying communications a year later.

I get married to my husband. moved back to Nicaragua. So now I've done a year of college and I'm in Nicaragua and now I have a baby and now I'm thinking, okay, I need to go back to college. So I enroll in the local Nicaraguan University. I do two years there, but now I'm doing design because that's what I always wanted to do. So that's when my husband decides that he wants to do his master's and we moved to Texas. But now I have three years of college from two different universities and I land in Texas and I'm thinking I'm never going to graduate. When am I?

How do I do this? So I enroll in the university at Texas A &M Commerce, now called East Texas A &M University here in Dallas. And I find myself in this situation where like I have my son, we are not US citizens, so I have a student visa. So I need to figure it out because as you probably know, tuition for international students is double. I see myself in front of this challenge. My challenge is how do I graduate from the university?

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I start networking and by the time that I applied to the university, had networked my way so much that I got seven scholarships. And that cost of tuition. It actually gave me money back that I used to pay for daycare. And then I was like, okay, I am now in college. I made that happen, but I am coming back and I'm, I'm a student worker. So I work all morning and then I go to school. I have no time to make lunch and I have a little kid, right? So.

I networked my way in and I become the president of Sodexo for the student board. So basically what I did is I would recruit students into meal plans and I would tell them about the benefits of it. And I was the president of that student board for the university cafeteria. But that gave me meals every day, morning, lunch, and dinner. And it also covered the cost of my son because he was young. So I was problem solving. And I was problem solving since I was...

you know, 20. And I didn't even realize it. And if you track it back before that, I did it when I was in Nicaragua too, when I was in high school. So I think that is the mindset of an entrepreneur. And we don't tend to see that when people are young because we tend to connect entrepreneurship with innovation in business, not only in a show with problem solving. Right. But it's very interesting to if you see it that way.

Right. I love it. love what I mean, there's so much that I can, I can, I can pick on everything, what you said and try to, you know, open that, that a little bit more, but you actually touched on the mom portion, right? Like you're a mom, your wife, you know, you are busy. You have been, you have been problem solving throughout all of that. And so it's a new thing, you know, moms, moms being entrepreneurs, you know,

Because at the end of the day, you what I keep telling all the, especially the younger women I meet is it doesn't matter as a woman, it doesn't matter even if you have the most supportive husband, even a stay at home dad, at the end of the day, the person in the household with the details in mind, because we are nurturers, our nurture, it's a female, it's a female, you know, pattern, it's a female thing, that nurturing.

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And so how amazing that, you know, you basically problem solve your kids meals by making somebody else do their work. I love that. Actually, that's a, that's a great idea. But, you know, your thoughts on, on mom entrepreneurs, you know, I can imagine there's so many women feel so overwhelmed. We're so many women entrepreneurs out there that because they have the kids or the husband or something, they're like, nah, not for me. Maybe not in this life. Maybe later. Yeah.

think are some ways in which moms that are entrepreneurs, you know, even if they're not launching a business, because like you said, you don't have to have a business, I think, to be a problem solving entrepreneur type of person. What are some things that maybe moms can be doing even if they just had the baby, they're just getting married or even even now going into staying at home because you know, they're allowing the husband to to fulfill his career and she's maybe sacrificing for that. Yeah, I think the most beautiful thing that business has given me

or entrepreneurship is to understand that life works in systems. Everything has a system. mean, nature has a system. The way the ants build their, you know, their, at houses. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. At hills. There we go. that word in English, I don't know it. I mean, you're on the same boat. Can I guess some words once in a while it happens. But if you look at the way that the world

works. Everything works through a system. You look at, you you zoom out and you look at highways and there's a system. You look at the subway and there's a system. You look at the way that animals are working through, you know, the different seasons and there's a system, even if it's not a system that's written. And when I started my business, I didn't really honestly, and this is the part that connects with being a mom. I started it because the thing that made me go into fully entrepreneurship when I graduated from my master's was the fact that one time I had this full-time job and I got sick. I was pregnant.

and they didn't allow me to work from home. This was prior to COVID. And I remember my husband was working at that same place and he was allowed to work from home. And I just had this moment where I thought, okay, what about when my children are sick? What about if they're sick and I'm going to have to take the time off because they're a priority. What about that? Does that mean I don't have Christmas with them? Does that mean? And I started to realize the level of limitations that I was going to have because I wasn't believing in myself. Right. So

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When I became an entrepreneur, I was then like any mom overwhelmed with just the different responsibilities. So I started to create a system the same way that I was creating a system for my business where you have a process and understanding those processes for like onboarding, post onboarding, what does it look like three months later? How do you re-engage with the customer? How do you upsell all those types of things, but in a personal way. So for me, there were certain things that I started to do. I did a family calendar on my phone. I color coded it.

At that time, we got a virtual assistant that would help us. I would forward her the emails from my kid's school and I would tell her, read it and add anything that's important into my calendar because those emails are long. just creating a system in which I would then allow my family to thrive in a way that we were growing just like my business was growing. So I started to look at it that way. So it almost sounds like you brought...

order from the cares because as a mom with all the ideas and bring it down the business, you're just bringing order in, know, so you can focus on the most on your on your top skills, right? Because if you're trying to be the mom that's doing this, you're trying to get every single email we get from the schools that, know, somebody please stop sending so many emails, right? I have I can't keep up with those emails.

the things you need to bring, the things you need to do, all the things about your business and all the things about you, even your household, you know, the guy that's mowing, the lady that's cleaning, the person that's fixing the toilet, right? It's chaos. So it sounds like you basically master that idea of focusing on what you're best at and then delegating pretty much even the school emails. Yes, delegation is a huge part of it. And like I said, I learned all of those different traits.

through becoming an entrepreneur. And then I learned how to apply it into my personal life. So to give you an example, my husband and I would spend hours doing laundry and folding clothes. Beautiful. But we were like, okay, what could we be doing with this time that we could be either making more money or saving time and spending time with the kids. And then we delegate it. And honestly, at first it was like, this is an unnecessary expense, but it's not, it's not. And you really need to see it that way because it maximizes

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other areas of your life. If you are a mom entrepreneur and you are not reinvesting in the areas in your life, there's going to be chaos. And that chaos is at some point going to be transferred into your personal life. You as a mom mentally, but also into your business. So I like to see it that way. like to look at, okay, what could I be optimizing and delegating so that there could be a balance? And I'm not saying that there's no chaos in my life. There's chaos, especially with teenagers now.

At least there's a system that allows me to think back into, how can I put this into a bucket of things that I can delegate? Right. And it is an important ability and an important skill to identify, right? Because I think that's one of the biggest issues that moms have, the entrepreneurial business moms is like, again, because we do have that nurturing thing in us, we want to please and do it all.

and actually a good friend of mine, know, a couple, two, three years ago, is that Gabby, you're trying to do it all, you know, and in the process of doing it all, all the play dates, all the things, all the things in our entire universe, you end up burning out, right? And I feel, yeah. Have you had, have you, have you ever had a burnout moment in your life? my gosh, yes. I think that is what led me to exiting the last business I was a part of. Okay.

So let's talk a little bit about that business and what was it? Tell us, tell us more about that business. So I started after I graduated with my master's in marketing. I had completed my undergrad in visual communications. I am a person that loves branding. I love creating logos, brands, building websites. I love the concept of bringing your idea into an actual visual element that people can then identify themselves with. So.

Every time that I would create a logo and I would see it in the front of a building or anything like that, it would make me so proud and happy. So when I graduated with my master's, I decided to then launch a marketing agency. And what I was building at that moment was an agency that could, it was more of a branding slash marketing consulting agency. And so my master's was in marketing strategy. So it was the concept of doing research to understand your audience, to then build your brand.

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One of the things that I learned quickly though, is that in order to really grow, you needed recurring revenue. You are going to need a logo today, you're not going to need it tomorrow, but my business has an employee every month. So how do I create that stability internally in the business? And that's when I tapped into digital marketing. So I was at that time working with a white label agency out of Nicaragua, which is where I was from, where I am from. And I had hired them. My cousin actually worked for them and she introduced me to them.

One of the biggest things that I have is I want to become a philanthropist. And so, and I believe as I continue to grow that philanthropy can be shown in different areas. So I had hired them and I love the concept of hiring people out of the country where I grew up. And we, you know, we became good friends and about six months in the founder of that company decided to turn that into a franchise model. So talking.

and he invited me to become the first franchise in Dallas. And at that time it was only three franchises, franchisees who were testing the model. It was a very innovative model. There were no digital marketing franchises at that time. I actually don't think I've ever heard of a franchise model for agencies. I'm fascinated to hear what you're saying. Yeah. So it was very interesting. And I think at that time I was like, there's no way that this can be successful. And it's all around.

concept that we build business owners here in the US. Right. And we would fulfill the services with our employees in Nicaragua. So kind of like the white label, but you have the access to a bigger team. So it allows those small business agency owners in the US to really scale because they have the workforce behind them. So when I hear when I heard this, I was like, this is a great idea. He seemed to be a good person. We were aligned in a lot of the vision and how we can help back in the country. But the other thing is I noticed that

the model didn't consider the foundation of a business brand, which is, okay, you can run, and this is if anyone's listening and they're thinking about doing any type of digital marketing, you can run all the ads you want, but if the place that converts your customer, which usually is your website, is not set up correctly, you will not convert them. So you're really just wasting money. If I'm running an ad and think about it from the consumer perspective, I'm on Facebook or on Google and I see your website.

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I go in and your website sucks. I don't know how to contact you. I don't know what service you're selling. I don't know where to buy it. Now you lost me and you every time someone clicks on the ad. So you lost me and you paid for me. You know what I mean? they didn't complete strategy. Basically, that's just an incomplete strategy. Okay. And, so what I proposed to him is let me build a business that fulfills branding and websites.

So there's a foundation for all the clients that we're then doing the paid ads for. So, and you think about it, it's a lifetime strategy for customers because you come in, you build their brand, you build that recognition online, you build trust with them, and now you send them into paid ads. It's beautiful. And as a concept, it's beautiful because you are able to return a customer long-term, but you're also able to actually have more of a success in the paid ad strategy because you know that you're building the right foundation.

Which now takes us to a little bit of more of the strategy, right? mean, this is, this is a podcast, the podcast of founders. have exited right. And our focus in is scaling a basis or actually, you know, finding the idea, scaling that idea, mastering that idea, making it valuable, which is what you did by creating recurrent revenue in something that was, you know, an incomplete strategy before, right. And then exiting. So, so.

How long, I mean, from the time you met this person and you guys continued to develop this idea and how long, how much time passed between that and the actual exit? Like the day you got your, whether it was a wire or your check in the mail, whatever, however they paid you, how long did it take? You know, Gabby, I think if there's one thing that I want to make very clear about this, this interview is that people tend to think that an exit looks just one way.

and exit can look in so many different ways. So for me specifically, I have a very interesting exit story. It took about two and a half years until I started considering the exit. And the way that it happened for us, and in all honesty, that's super accelerated, usually it's like 10 years, but the idea for the digital marketing franchise model was great. And we started to see super great response. I mean, by year one, in 12 months, we already had about

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18 franchisees in the US. We had about 22 franchisees. The problem that I personally had is at that moment, and as I'm telling you, I was building the side of the business that would fulfill the websites and the branding. So what I was doing is in total, we had 200 employees. 50 of those employees were just from my branding side, around 30 to 50. So I was managing the team that would every time a French and think about the concept, right? We would get 22 franchisees.

and each franchisee had their clients and we had to fulfill the service for all of their clients, right? So it started to become a monster. It started to grow. It was like creating, I mean, obviously like a little franchise throughout the U.S. Was it all with the franchisees all in the U.S.?

Yes. Okay. And then they would have their clients and their back office would be in Nicaragua, which would be the master back office fulfilling everything. Did EAT and you said it was a white label so they could sell their services or did... No, when the franchise model was created before that, it was a white label. Well, when we created the franchise model, it was on this brand. Yeah. Amazing. Okay. So, so what for, guess from the time that you guys...

created the franchise model and started adding. And then you said it took about two and a half years before you sold it, you started thinking about selling. When? Yes. It's a little different because we had the digital marketing side. Right. And the branding. And they operated as the same company, but they were in essence, they were two different ones because I was looking at everything on the branding. That was really my business. That was where I fully found it and created the processes, the idea.

I came in from a Google Doc to thinking, okay, if a franchisee sells a logo, what does the process look like? What is the onboarding process? Who does what? That's where I started building my team. We had a director of creative. We had a manager for, we created pods. and we just created the process of each franchisee could fulfill that internally, right? Wow. No, go ahead. I didn't want to stop you. Yeah. Yeah. And it was beautiful to start seeing that grow. But at the same time, that was a small part.

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of the bigger company, which was the franchise model, And so what I started to see, which by the way, side note, at the same time that I was building that side of the business, I also was a franchisee owner. So I had my agency in Dallas as a franchisee, which I loved because I got to see the experience as a client of my own business. Right. So you were on the franchisee side and you were on the back office, franchise store side, fulfilling.

You know, all the 250 or 200 employees you guys had. That's insane. I have never heard of it. Like this is the first time I'm here. Is there competition for this at the time that when you're owner or was that a blue ocean moment? cause it sounds like it was you create. mean, there's digital agencies everywhere. In, in fact, they're so difficult to, to tell which one's the good one. You know, everybody, you you just, I just, you get overwhelmed, but it sounds like you guys had like this wonderful.

concept and what's their competition in terms of, of course other agencies existed and exist to this day, but the model, the delivery model and the expansion model, cause that means you guys bigger faster, right? Yeah. I think it sounds beautiful in essence, but there are a couple of broken pieces along the way. One of them being that franchisees now became more of salespeople because it's a franchise model. So you don't, you don't need to operate, which in essence sounded, sounded beautiful, right? But.

you are a business owner who then joined the model. But your mentality is still of a business owner, not a salesperson. So that was kind of a broken piece on it. There's obviously going to be competition all the time. But what I will say is one of the most beautiful things is that we had a very complete team of people who had a background. Digital marketing is is a notion. You can be an expert in SEO, you can be an expert in paid ads, can an expert in strategy. But because we had different agencies that joined,

the expertise came into that melting pot and it could have become something very strong. I think that for me particularly, and that takes me back to the exit and my thought process. This is, mean, just for context, when I started my business, I had just finished my masters. I really just wanted to have an option that would allow me that if my children were sick, I could take the time. That was my motivator. yes, yeah. didn't start that.

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thinking, well, we're going to become a Fortune 500 or an Inc 5000, you know? And then it just started to grow and grow and grow. And I was now becoming an operator and I was still entrepreneurial, but it was now a business. It was a real business. And I was having real conversations. And what that meant is I found myself in a room where my partner who had invented the idea of the franchise model, you know, he decided to

that it made more sense for us to merge the branding business and merge the franchise model. And in essence, it made sense. in retrospect, I was not ready to have those conversations. OK, so tell me more because I know you mentioned earlier they were kind of separate and you were more on the branding than the other. then so there were separate businesses. And but then I guess working like a joint venture type of thing. Yeah. OK. And I think that was my first mistake.

I didn't actually sign anything that said that it was a separate business. So I was literally just building something for someone who I just trusted and we were building something together. But I started to notice little things where like, I wasn't a part of certain conversations and yet this was my business. Employees didn't fully know that I was one of the owners, know, which I'm okay. I don't need anyone knowing, but it is part of those things where because of my lack of knowledge in those conversations,

I wasn't asking the questions I needed to ask. When we were sitting down to define how much equity of the bigger franchise model. To do the merger. To do the merger. Right, okay. Yeah, how do you calculate that? Well, you got to look at the revenue. I know that now, but when I was having that conversation, I didn't. And looking back, I think, and I've seen this in a lot of trades, especially in women who are not building businesses to become billionaires. Right. We're so grateful that someone's giving us the opportunity.

Wow, this is awesome. You're believing in me. Yes, we're growing, but you know what? Like you gotta put your pants on and you gotta really have those uncomfortable situations. And if that person doesn't want to have them, that's not the person you should be partnering with. my gosh. I am loving what you're saying, right? Because especially coming with my legal background, that's exactly what we preach. And especially with us working with so many foreign entrepreneurs here in the U S right. Foreign entrepreneurs that are coming in, whether you immigrated for school,

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for the need to be in a different country or for whatever reason, as immigrant entrepreneurs, if you may put it, we have the same rights to the documents, the contracts, the LLCs and the corporations as anybody else. And so that's big. I mean, what you're talking about could really happen to anybody. mean, even if, but you did touch on the point I was like, I'm giving this opportunity. Yeah, the, okay, so you started negotiating,

equity and then you so you guys negotiated that to kind of consolidate the operation and then later you sold is that how it worked or or as you guys were consolidating then it sold at that time. No the idea was to consolidate it and just continue that growth you know and we weren't and and it takes you back to being a female I mean and not knowing how to really have that conversation because it happened in a very not professional setting.

It happened without me being able to look at numbers. I'm not fine. Finance is not my background. You show me an Excel sheet and I will like crumble. I'm like, I don't know. I don't even know. And so because of that, I wasn't asking the questions that I needed to ask around the revenue and how do we calculate this and what is, know, I was just not asking enough to understand what my business was worth.

And how do you actually go through a merger? But I agreed to that and we went through the merger and for about eight months, um, I continued to serve on the board and to continue helping that business, build the business. And, and by the way, things, mean, one of the, and I think this is more of an experience of being a female, but things that were told to me were things like, Oh, well, you know, if, if I give you more here, I'll be taking away from the employees and touching your heart, touching your heart. I don't want to take away from anyone.

think that's one of the things that unfortunately for me specifically, I went into business with someone who we didn't share the same values, even though it looked like we did. And that's how you learn. You can't really run away from that. You can't really forecast that. You don't know. But it is the reality. And that's how I ended up. Now I can read an Excel sheet and I can talk about. And so, know,

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Yeah, exactly. But but yeah, so then about eight months later, we were three partners who owned the the business. The business was doing great. It was reaching, you know, we reached about five million and I think it was year three. And so and it just kept growing. But my other partner and I realized that we were just not really a part of the vision and direction of where the business was going. We also didn't love the way that

the focus was on a personal growth versus the real side of the customer service of the clients. There were things that we were seeing that would be broken around the service that we just didn't agree with. And every time we would bring it up, we would be pushed away. And that just didn't roll with us because this is my business. We have a say. And that's when I just, went, I think that's where I touched rock bottom because I was like,

What do I do here? Now I'm not my equity percentage does not make me a majority owner. So now how do I have these conversations? How do I go back and be able to guide this without having someone explode because their ego is bigger than what we're building? And that's biggest part that I was like, you know what, I don't need this. I have my family, I have my kids. And I remember

I'm to get super personal here, but I remember, you know, that's totally fine. This is the point is to get the real stories for founders from founders that didn't exit. So it's real life. You know, it's I was in the car and I was with my husband and we were fighting because he's like, you've got to stop talking about this. Like it is what it is. You're you already made the wrong choice in the equity. You already had the wrong conversations. This has already happened and we just started fighting. We usually don't fight.

and my son in the car started crying and that's when was like, this can't happen. I want this. Like this doesn't ever happen. We don't fight, we don't yell at each other. And my son has never even seen us, you know, he's never cried because we're fighting. I was like, this is becoming too much of my life and that is not good. And I would rather not have any of this than have to live with what I'm living right now.

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Yeah, and that's when I made the decision and my other partner. Unfortunately, it was actually quite a legal battle. there's you know, we went through a lawsuit that we settled before going to court. You anyone can find it online. It's public record and you'll see more about the details of what happened, but it was really unnecessarily unfair on the way that things were handled. Just to give you an idea, my partner is a diabetic. When he said he wanted to sell, he was actually also the VP of sales.

He was fired the next day and he was all of his medical insurance and everything was taken off and he's a diabetic. So he had one month that he had to pay out of pocket all of his medical. He was able to do that. So he got, yeah. It got a little rough and it just showed the true colors of what we had been seeing but didn't want to accept on that partnership. Right. But you know, it's, you know, it's, you know, we see it. I mean, it's not uncommon.

Right. It's not uncommon. And I think part of building that thick skin as an entrepreneur, as somebody that commands in business and that, you know, it's learning from those things, right? I feel like being an entrepreneur is like being a parent. Like you are it. yeah. you just don't have a manual, right? Like you feel weird because like,

You become a parent, whether you're a male or female, you know, it's like, oh, there's new human being here and now you have to take care of it. But there's literally no manual other than your instincts, you know, however God made you, however he wired you, you have these instincts that you kind of have to, you know, use, but then there's no actual manual, you know, and you just need, know, on how to have the difficult conversations, how to.

you know, advocate for yourself and then go through the difficult situation of having to be in a lawsuit. I mean, that's never pleasant, you know, but we see it, you know, because I think part of being an entrepreneur is also defending and learning to defend and understanding when and how to have those difficult conversations and the burnout, you know, you mentioned, I mentioned the burnout, you know, I've had two or three big ones in my life. And then, you know, I never met an entrepreneur that didn't have them. I mean, I think you can ask.

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anybody. But that's the beauty of being a human being on this earth is that we're here to grow and learn. I mean, that's how we are wired to just improve and get up and continue to go. And I feel like that's a skill, that's a characteristic that you have because you're here telling me that you did have, even if you got into even a legal battle, but you're here and I know you love what you do.

There was an exit at some point and then where are you at now? What are you doing? I think that has been the most kind of like, you know, the most beautiful transformation. think a lot of founders will feel very identified with this. But when I exited, when we finally signed everything and the first check came in, one of the things that really happened through the year prior to that was a transformation in me, because for the last four years,

building that business had been my identity. I was a part of the business. I was a founder. I was creating this. I was building that. And then suddenly I didn't have any of that. And I was like, who am I? Like, how do I reinvent myself? And when I introduce, mean, the simplest dumbest thing, when I go into a networking event and I introduce myself, how do I introduce myself? Because I'm not going to tell you, I went through this and then that and we build it. So how do I reinvent myself to believe that

What I built was part of who I am and what is next on that, right? Thankfully, I'll tell you this. My husband helped me a lot through that. And at the same time, one of the most beautiful things that I received from going through that journey was that I had clients who became investors in my new business. I had clients who became partners in this new business. So Toucan Cocktails is now the company that I'm helping build. They were actually a client of mine.

when I started my agency. Wow. So full circle coming back. But it also it is so beautiful to see that because it makes you believe on the quality of work that you provide people. And to concoct is actually I became an advisor to them when I was building my my business and they offered me to come on board. I am now officially the CMO and I'm one of the founding members. We are five partners. I am the only female in the youngest and I am just if I can tell you anything I it is.

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The biggest learning lesson is find the right people around you. I mean, during my time that I was building the franchise and the branding, my neck was full of pimples. I was so stressed. And a lot of times it wasn't the business. It was just jumping into a call with someone who would gaslight you or have conversations that would just make you overthink or think differently about your capabilities. even. And now I love doing this. I love jumping into calls. My partners are incredible people.

who have taught me so much. And there are days where, I mean, just to give you an idea, my background is not in the alcohol industry and now I'm building a cocktail company. And yet for the last year and a half, my partners have taken the time to really show me how to grow in this industry. And they support me in a way that I come every day and I believe that we are all working towards the same goal. And it's just beautiful to have the right people around you. It really is kind of like nurturing plants and seeing them grow.

And takes you back to as a mom, I've seen it with my children. My children were struggling the years that I was building the business and not, you and now they're flourishing. They're in like three sports. They're doing this. And it's a big part of also that energy that you can you can bring back without even noticing. Right. And yeah. And again, you mentioned the values and I wanted to go back to that values. How what what are values to you? What are examples of values?

that you value in finding the right people for the business? I think I'll simplify in this. grew up in a very conservative household. I am Catholic by background. I believe in God. And at that time, what I saw was someone who was also a Christian, quote unquote. So that was a big part of the narrative. And I think us who are

religious in some way when we see someone like that, we're like, okay, we have similarities in our thought process. Now I see it differently. Now I don't think that's a driver of what I believe will make you a good person, especially after seeing what I went through. Now what I see is this to me, especially in business, if you are a person who has the right interest in others, conversations that are uncomfortable will happen. And those conversations will be okay because there will be a resolution. So traits that I look into.

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If you don't want to share, like if we're having an equity conversation and you are not answering my questions, like if I ask you, what does this mean? How much do we want to exit for? What is the exit plan? When we exit this percentage, what would that equate to? If those answers are not clearly given, that is someone that doesn't share the same idea. You really don't want to answer that because I'm not really part of that plan.

I like to have transparency. Transparency, honesty are a big part of the values that I look into. Business is complicated enough. Let's not complicate it more with gaslighting the reality. Good people usually just want to know the truth. They just want to know so they can understand and make decisions. And I look for people like that. I also look for people that when things go wrong, we just, we're a team. Like if your kid makes a mistake, you don't kick him out of the house. You come and you sit and you grow and you learn and then you keep going.

And that's the same thing that I look for in partners, mutually, right? So my partner has one thing that says, he says, there are no good news or bad news, there's only news. And that is the type of partnership that I'm looking for. Like, yes, there's only news, what are we gonna do about this next? And how are we gonna do it together? Right, because I mean, it all goes back to at end of the day, we live on this earth only once, and then we're gone.

and then you have to make the best out of the time that you have here. I mean, you just don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. So, so it's beauty. So, I mean, I feel like you have showed us here the beauty of being a female mom, wife, entrepreneur who's got, who's seen, seen the ugly side of entrepreneurship, but has also seen them, the beauty of it, right. And how you can, at the end of the day, create your own universe. And that's something somebody told me as a woman.

You know, because I made the same choice when, when I, after having my, my big law firm job, I created my own law firm because I didn't want to be at anybody's, know, anybody's schedule. I wanted to be on my schedule for my kids, for my husband, for my dogs, even when I like to walk my dogs, I don't like to put them on the, you know, that kind of thing. the beauty of creating our own universe, you know, and for you, it looks like being an amazing entrepreneur.

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you know, learning through experience, which is completely normal. And now leveraging everything you've learned into your because this is your second, the right technically business. We have had others. Yeah, I would say officially it is going to be my third if you count our real estate business as a business. Yeah. OK. So your third venture here with the CMO position. That's OK. So tell us a little bit about a little bit more about.

the cocktail business that you're building. I know you told us a little bit about you had some previous connections and relationship with some of the people that you're in business with now, but tell us more. how, did that happen? And how did you apply or how are you applying what you learned in the previous business into the new one? Right. Cause now you have, it's a more mature version of you. It's a more knowledgeable version of you. So

It probably feels like you're a new person too, right? It does. In a new industry. But I love this new version. I think the story goes back to when I was doing my masters. I actually had my first startup in my masters. It didn't turn into a real business, so I don't count it, but it was like doing a masters on its own. And I was pitching. And at one of the pitch competitions that was for alumni of the university, I met a really nice gentleman called Dennis Harris. And he was actually the father-in-law.

of the owner or the founder of Toucan Cocktails. So he introduced me to him. We became friends. became he became one of my clients and then I joined. So I think the transformation has been the most intriguing to me and also the biggest flag of me being a true entrepreneur, because even though there's things I learned from my previous business, this is a whole different business. And let me tell you, I mean, this is the other business was a real business.

It grew. was awesome. But this, this is, this is another monster. I mean, we are not only launching a cocktail company into a very saturated industry, we're also inventing a new technology.

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that brings in a solution. And even though that sounds fantastic and super fun, inventing a new technology into an industry that is very saturated, but also very traditional. And when I say traditional, I mean, you buy Bacardi, you buy this, the other brands, and then you have your cocktail mixed in a can. it's only innovation is through flavor, not so much the technology that you use. You don't see any packaging innovation. So that has been an interesting part of launching and being able to

Submerge this idea into the thoughts not only of the consumer, but also of the retailer that's buying from us, right? So the alcohol distribution sales in the United States, you probably know this, has a three tier process, except in Texas where it has a four tier, which means that we, as a producer of a cocktail company, sell it to a distributor who then sells it to a retailer, the retailer being like Spex or Total Wine, and then you as a consumer come into Total Wine. In Texas, if you see it at a country club,

There's a fourth tier because the retailer, so specs would sell it to the golf port. So that's just like the basic stuff that I'm learning. Thank God that my partners have an incredible background on alcohol distribution sales and the understanding of that growth. And where I have come in is really being able to, which by the way, Gaby, for startups that are listening, the first thing that I did for Toucan cocktails was a go-to market research analysis to determine what was the path that they needed to be in.

to actually see success. agencies usually, they are like, well, we need paid ads and a website. Okay, but let's analyze what's really happening in the industry. Who's doing paid ads? How much would paid ads cost you? Is that really the strategy you wanna deploy or is there a different way in which we can launch into market? How much money do you need? How much money do you need to see a return? How much money do you need to like actually see results? And that's what I came in and I did for Toucan cocktails. We went viral within about 30 days.

Wow viral like on the Instagram and all the social media? Instagram and TikTok we had 10 million views in one of our videos. Other videos that we have have reached the million views which has been very exciting and we have seen that trickle into the strategy that we're doing just to give you an idea because of the foundation that I created with our website every time that we have gone viral people have seen us.

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and they come into our website and then they connect with us. And we've had very, very big companies reputable that I don't know that I can mention, reach out to us for a partnership. We haven't closed any partnerships yet, but they're coming in. And the number one thing that made that possible is the fact that when I was starting building the foundation, I connected all of our website into a system that integrated with our CRM. So when people would message us, I actually got a notification immediately and I would message them back.

So that response system allowed us to be on top of the visibility that we got from the reality. And that is the one thing that makes that knowledge and process so important because for startups, usually you build a website, but you're not actually thinking, okay, if somebody contacts me, where does that go? And I have seen agencies who the contact person of that form is the agency that built it. They're not gonna be responding when a big company messages.

So building that foundation was a big part of what I brought in to facilitate the growth that we were having. you know, it's been exciting to now just put this in the market. Yeah, I was hoping you would have them so we can show them. They look beautiful. You open them up and then you mix the cocktail. Show us how they work. So you open it. Sounds like this. So it's two cans like the bird, it's because it's two cans. The top can is going to have your spirit. In this case, it's going to be vodka.

I have espresso martini. So one of the things that makes this so unique is this is science. One of my partners is a biochemist and an engineer. When you mix alcohol with sugars and you sit down on a shelf until you are ready to drink it, there's a breakdown process that happens between the alcohol and the sugars. So I don't know you, I have never had a already pre-mixed cocktail that I buy from a liquor store that tastes like a margarita I get at a bar. It's almost

almost impossible. The reason is because the alcohol percentage, when it's high, it'll break the sugars down more. So it won't taste fresh. So by separating it, we're to have a fresh cocktail. So when you separate it, you open the bottom can and you're gonna take the lid completely. Is it cold? This one's not cold, but it can be cold and you can add some ice and then you shake it.

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and it'll cool off. then you open your vodka and I guess we're having an espresso now, Gaby. What? I guess we're about to have an espresso. Well, yeah, know. Well, mine in the other room because I actually have some of them. We have them here at the house. We've tried them. We love them. We hosted a party together recently and everybody loved them and obviously highly recommend. They are delicious. Well, I mean, what an amazing journey that, Deanna, that you've had. I mean, we talked.

about everything from your background from Nicaragua as a female, married with the teenage children. Children are growing up here in Texas. Your building of the business. We talked about issues, right? And they come up and now you're showing us your new product. It's amazing. And I just can't wait to see.

where you and your new company are going to go. But I'm sure we're going to be reading a lot about you. We're going to be seeing them in the news, possibly a very large accent. Who knows? Maybe, maybe, who knows? I think, you know, just to end it, the most incredible part of this has been going through reinventing myself, finding the right people and now having a product that is a no brainer. mean, yeah. Where do you find something that becomes a shaker? It's

the most beautiful side of it is we have a patent on the technology and we're hoping that we can license this into different industries. So the opportunity is huge. And now that I have the capabilities to understand and have those uncomfortable situations and have the right partnership, I feel like I'm in the right track to see, to see, you know, that success story really come to fruition. Yeah. And I'm sure we'll see that. And again, I am, I am so excited, obviously to know you and to have you here.

So Tatiana, thank you so much for being in Exit-Ed, the podcast where we talk to founders about grinding and then exiting their business. Thank you.

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Thank you for tuning into this episode of Exit-Ed. We are passionate about supporting founders at every stage of their journey from scaling up to planning an exit. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean a lot to me if you would leave us a five-star rating on your preferred platform. If you know a founder who would benefit from our insights or wants to learn more about exiting a business, let them know about our podcast, Exit-Ed. To stay in touch with us, you can follow us on LinkedIn, TikToks, and many other platforms.

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